In my previous post, Using LINQ to Twitter in Windows 8 Metro Apps, I cheated a little (some might say a lot) on my UI architecture by using code-behind. In this post, I’ll make it all better by showing you how to separate the model and interaction logic from the UI design – proper separation of concerns. I’ll accomplish this with a pattern, named Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM), which is widely used for WPF, Silverlight, and (soon) Windows 8 Metro Apps. I’ll start by discussing what MVVM is, move to ......

While the title of this post suggests focus on LINQ to Twitter, it also indicates that I’ll be discussing how to build a Windows 8 Metro application. The application itself will display a list of tweets from Twitter’s public feed. In the sections that follow, you’ll read background information on pre-requisites to understanding the post, learn how to get LINQ to Twitter working with Visual Studio 11, and then see a step-by-step on how the application is built. Getting Started You can build Metro ......

Installing Windows 8 Developer Preview isn’t always simple. It was troublesome on a 32-bit machine, but much easier on x64. Since Win8’s debut at Build last September, VirtualBox supports installing Win8 natively, so you’ll want to download the latest version of VirtualBox to make sure you don’t have problems. Another good option is VMWare. They have a free product, VMWare Player, that runs well. The only problem is it doesn’t have native Win8 support, but don’t let that get in the way. This blog ......

Here’s a site, by Lucian Wischik, that contains 101 Async Samples: http://www.wischik.com/lu/A... There are examples in both C# and VB. Some examples have a selector that lets you toggle between .NET 4.0 and the new Async syntax. Each example has a run button so you can execute and see the return value. Throughout, you’ll see many different ways to use Async. I think it’s a very nice resource. @JoeMayo ......

While adding a new feature to the LINQ to Twitter Search API, I made significant changes to the Search entity that will break existing code. The new feature is support for Tweet Entities, a recent addition to Twitter’s Search API. I’ll cover Tweet Entities support after explaining what has changed. Motivation for Change When Twitter implemented Tweet Entities for their Search API, they only supported JSON format. LINQ to Twitter used ATOM for Search API queries; so, I didn’t have a choice on data ......

There’s an ongoing discussion in the community about various aspects of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) awards and this is a quick contribution I’ll make to share a few thoughts. Recent events in this discussion include MVPs who either weren’t re-awarded and/or declined their award. There are alignments and differences between their perspectives and mine, particularly in the areas of expectations and values. This is one of my contributions to that on-going discussion. In it’s simplest ......